ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the base of the pyramid (BoP) concept is often cited when bringing together business opportunities in the poorest tiers of the world's population with poverty alleviation measures. The BoP paradigm should include the concepts of both intra- and inter-generational justice. The ultimate goal is to harmonise BoP development with the sustainable use of natural resources. There is a clear need to find new approaches to consumption and production to avoid replicating the resource-intensive Western lifestyle at the BoP. An immediate opportunity for sustainable development at the BoP arises from successful eco-efficiency measures that reduce the ecological impact per unit of consumption. Eco-effectiveness strategies offer opportunities at the BoP because non-sustainable products and processes often do not exist and so do not need replacing. Sufficiency efforts that start at the current level of consumption at the BoP can have only very limited success as overall consumption and resource use in this segment is already very low.
